


Only in Darkness

by MoonlightShines (Thatkillervibe)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Brutal Battle, Disability, Doctor Caitlin, F/M, Gen, Not quite gore, things just go really wrong ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-13 02:56:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17479895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thatkillervibe/pseuds/MoonlightShines
Summary: Caitlin felt like how Barry described Flashtime: Each breath was eternal, every blink, slow and excruciating as she continued to exist, going forward in a future she tried to resist.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm going to be honest. I feel like there's something wrong. Something missing with this fic. Like either I'm being insensitive with what I'm trying to do or that what I was trying to convey was not properly coming through. There's no magical Music Maestro or Barry time travel that will fix what I'm about to do. But I'm going to work better on my ending and tweak it. But doing that means I've split this story in half in two small chapters. It means that this first half is especially bleak, which wasn't my intention. I'm sorry!
> 
> For warnings see the end note.

Caitlin stared at her ransacked medicine bag on the counter and struck it down. It fell to the floor in a heap. Her expensive equipment crashing and pills spilling all over.

 

She felt like how Barry described Flashtime: Each breath was eternal, every blink, slow and excruciating as she continued to exist, going forward in a future she tried to resist.  

 

For the first time in her life Caitlin understood rage.  

 

Not as Killer Frost, not under any metahuman influence. Just herself, Caitlin Snow and her profound anger.

 

It was vengeful and harsh and unforgiving. She wanted to rip the world apart with her two bare hands.

 

There was a reason why Caitlin didn’t work in a hospital that went beyond loyalty to Team Flash.

She remembered the first time a patient died under her care. She was twenty, the youngest resident in her program’s history, and would go on to be the first woman to graduate top of the faculty of medicine’s class. She was in the ER and it was a young man less than forty years old. He hemorrhaged in front of her. it was too late to save him.

 

She remembered so distinctly the feeling of failure, the stiff and formal way she had to watch her supervisor inform the patient’s wife that he didn’t make it. The sting of the corpse still there, eyes open but not awake. How she grabbed the wife to weep with her, sorrowful beyond belief. She remembered her supervisor’s criticism, firm but understanding.

 

_“You’re too emotional, Snow. You need to be more removed. To practice you need to be colder. It’s the only way effective work is done by the staff, in whom our city trusts.”_

 

But that wasn’t who she was.

 

That was her first death. There’d be more. She’d no longer blanch. It didn’t make her not want to practice but the longer she wore scrubs and pulled overnight shifts, the more she saw people suffering needlessly and only being able to relieve pain.

 

And that wasn’t why she went into medicine. Why she earned a degree in bioengineering. So she swapped her muted blue scrubs for a crisp clean lab coat. She had the mind and the will and the determination to build a better medical future. To crush the illnesses and cure the diseases.

 

To build the technology and strive forward in her field. It wasn’t naive because Caitlin knew she could do it and she had. It was what she was good at, praised for in the research industry, what singled her out as an ideal asset to work for Star Labs. That she could fix and mend and _make._

 

She’d _always_ been able to fix and mend and--

 

“Caitlin?”

 

Caitlin covered her mouth with her trembling right hand, her other clutching the porcelain sink so hard her nails were going white.

 

She swallowed down her pathetic sob and stood up straighter. Her hands went to her hair, wringing out the blood and gunk water that had her excuse herself to the ladies’ room in the first place.

 

The door swung open, and Jesse Quick limped in, her gorgeous suit in tatters.

 

“You don’t happen to have alcohol swabs? I’d rather get my leg disinfected before my dad sees all this grit and blood.”

 

Caitlin breathed in through her nose and exhaled slowly through her mouth.

 

“Yeah, of course Jesse.” She gestured to the dumped medical bag on the floor. Jesse side eyed it. “There should be some inside the front pocket.”

 

“Sweet, thanks.”

 

Jesse was pretty badly beaten, cracked ribs, broken wrist, but she healed fast. Caitlin expected some 5 hours, her suit however, not quite so lucky. Cisco would have to—

 

Cisco.

 

Caitlin gave up on her hair, watching the red clots circle and spin down the drain, turning the water pinkish.

 

She turned to watch Jesse carefully clean her wounds.

 

“Let me help you with that.”

 

Jesse’s grip on the face cloth loosened, and she hopped up onto the sink’s counter like a little kid. Caitlin took the alcohol swabs and bent down in front of her like a mother, gently finishing up the work.

 

They looked like a scene out of an apocalypse movie.

 

Jesse’s leg twitched with the sting of the pain of a particularly deep gash and she hissed between her teeth, the overpowering smell of sterileness strengthening.

 

“Sorry,” Caitlin mumbled, crumpling the wrapper and turning away.

 

“Caitlin—“

 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

It went quiet, all but the hum of Star Labs’ mediocre internal plumbing.

 

Caitlin looked up.

 

Jesse’s eyes were steely, her jaw clenched, angry. “I was just going to say thank you.”

 

Caitlin closed her eyes for a little longer than a moment. “Oh,” she said, dull.

 

Caitlin stepped over the mess on the floor and pushed the door open with the heel of her palm. “You should go home.”

 

She walked forward and spared no glance back.

 

She went into the Med Bay, and fought hard with her nausea. Barry was still unconscious, but his vitals read he should be waking up within the next two hours. Iris slept next to him, her head slumped forward against his chest.

 

“Caitlin?”

 

She turned to the right. They’ve never had to squeeze in _two_ hospital gurneys in the Bay before.

 

Caitlin took a step forward, touching Cisco’s shoulder. Her skin felt on fire as Cisco’s dead eyes flinched. He was always so expressive, Cisco. His heart so full of emotion, and she couldn’t stand this terror, how it gripped him, causing the trembling blankness swept over his face.

 

“It’s me. I’m here, it’s me. I’m back,” she reassured him, kicking off her battle boots hastily to climb completely into his bed.

 

Cisco clung to her like a lifeline.  

 

She’s never leaving him again. They’d have to pry him out of her cold dead hands.

 

 _My hands too,_ Killer Frost informs her solemnly, and Caitlin is surprised by it.

 

“Please,” he said, voice rough through his tears. Caitlin could barely stomach looking at him, letting him bury his head against her chest. “Don’t go. I’m so scared.”

 

Caitlin looked up at the ceiling, blinking back tears again. She swallowed.

 

“I should bring you to a hospital.”

 

“No!”  he was quick to yelp, his fingers digging indents into her skin. She _does_ have to bring him to a hospital, but they could wait until tomorrow.

 

She held him, knowing it would never be enough. Knowing that it was over.

 

Cisco pulled away, staring straight ahead.

 

“You’re not doing more tests on me. You’re not talking medical. I know what that means.”

 

Caitlin’s stomach dropped. It means he knows she failed him.

 

“It’s permanent, isn’t it? This isn’t like Barry with Patty. It’s dark. I’m blind. It’s—“

 

There was nothing she could say, nothing he would see for her to show him it would be okay. Because it won’t be. It can’t.

 

Cisco’s screaming still rung in her ears. The way he fell, wiping right out of the sky and tumbling eighteen stories into another breach just when Caitlin thought he was going to hit the ground and shatter all of his bones. She remembered wanting to create a slide for him to slip down, but knowing at his acceleration it would still end in a deadly crash.

 

She remembered Barry unable to move, already broken both his legs, writhing as Caitlin told Iris to take him away. Jesse battling alone up there and barely hanging on. The way Caitlin couldn’t breathe until Cisco’s body suddenly popped back into the fight, stiff, Cisco paralyzed as he screamed for _her_ of all people. That it was dark and that he couldn’t—That he’d no longer—

 

He won’t ever be able to see.

 

“It’s permanent,” she whispered in confirmation.

 

 _You want me to take over?_ Killer Frost asks her.

 

 _No,_ she tells her, even as she’s panicking, starting to lose control as the weight of her words sunk in.

 

It’s _permanent_.

 

But he’ll adapt, because he’s Cisco Ramon. He’ll learn braille and get a service dog. He’ll use a cane in the first few months and wear killer sunglasses. He’ll move in with her where she can see him, watch him, help him learn his new life. And who knows? Losing sight does not mean losing powers, knowledge, or experience. He was still a meta.  Daredevil may be a comic book character but he’s a kickass superhero. It would give her and his mama heart attacks, but surely Cisco could be the same.

 

She cupped his face into her hands, brushing his hair and wiping away his tears as she began to sob. “You’re still my Cisco. You’re still my rock and soul and heart.”

 

At this point she didn’t even know who she was comforting, Cisco or herself.

 

“I’ll take care of you until you can stand on your two feet again. This isn’t where your life ends,” she promised him. She was pleading now, to anyone who would listen.

 

This can't be where she loses him. It can’t.

 

Cisco’s lip trembled. “I just want to get to see you again.”


	2. Can You See The Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes there's light at the end of the tunnel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so I'd like to thank @livsig aka @cisco-loves-caitlin on tumblr for being a great beta, who helped me when I was in a slump.

Cisco’s words were both painful as powerful, sending shudders down Caitlin’s spine. 

 

He wanted to see her again, and all she could think of was how much she didn’t want him to.

 

How she wasn’t sure her own eyes would ever light up the same, that a smile would ever pull from the corner of her mouth. How it didn’t matter how she looked now because now he’d never know. Her failure would burden over her shoulders, and her walk would grow heavier with every step because of this.

 

What happened to him. What she couldn’t do for him. If by some miracle, he saw her, she wasn’t sure she’d be the same. Or that he’d like who she’d be.

  
Not this time.

 

“I’m so sorry,” she choked out.

 

Cisco’s hands reached up, uncertain, trailing their way up Caitlin’s Killer Frost jacket, passed her shoulders and her neck, until his hands were over her face too. His fingers rested against her cheeks, his thumbs on her mouth. He gasped slightly, when Caitlin parted her lips, turning her face into his hand to kiss it, tasting the salt from her own tears.

 

“Caitlin,” he breathed, sounding like he was in a trance.

 

Caitlin held her breath. “What?”

 

He was wearing that pinching face. The tell tale sign of a—

 

 _“What?!”_ she urged him.

 

“I can still vibe…” His voice was muddy, like he could barely trust what he was saying, what he was experiencing, and Caitlin watched him, waiting for the moment where it would pass and the memory, the figment of whatever he was imagining would float away, plunging him back to black. She prepared herself for it, for his horror and wrecked hope, how he’d cry and she’d have to hold him again.

 

It never came.

 

Cisco’s hands were still on her face when he broke out into a huge smile, one she thought she might never see again, _“I can see my vibes!”_

 

Iris startled in her chair next to Barry’s bed at the commotion. “What’s wrong? What is it? Is it Cisco?”

 

His eyebrows furrowed and he flung his arm out in the wrong direction. “Iris, come here.”

 

Caitlin didn’t understand what was happening. This was impossible.

 

Iris got up immediately and Cisco instructed her to hold his other hand. He bowed his head in concentration. “You’re wearing a purple hoodie with black sweats. They’re Adidas, and now you’re looking at me in shock because _oh my god that’s what you’re wearing I can vibe real time right here in this very room."_

 

Caitlin squeezed his hand. “Cisco breathe.” He was hallucinating. It was the concussion, all in his head. It had to be. This didn’t make any sense.

 

And yet...A purple hoodie with black Adidas sweatpants with the three stripes was exactly what Iris was wearing and she only changed an hour ago.

 

Cisco turned to Caitlin, his fingers flexing against her skin, and she almost believed it. She almost thought that science was wrong that her charts and textbooks and own medical evaluations were _wrong_ as he looked at her as if he really could, his expression glazed over with wonder.

 

Slowly, the wonderment faded away. His dead eyes grew wide as if he was taking in her appearance, how she was still dressed in tattered jeans and her splattered Frost jacket, and he leaned away from her, staring head to toe.

 

But that was impossible.

 

“Caitlin, you’ve got blood still in your hair. Maybe you should wash that out.”

 

Or maybe not.

 

She sobbed again, a funny noise slipping out of her mouth, and she covered it, shocked as Iris clapped her hands with joy.

 

It was real.

 

 _“You have vibe sight!”_ Caitlin blurted out.

  
Cisco laughed a little at that, probably because his life drastically turned around once again, but also maybe because _vibe sight_ sounds funny. Caitlin didn’t care why, what mattered was how that laugh brought back to life a part of her she swore had just died.

 

“I do!”

 

Just like that, the thick tension, the fear sticking sweat to the back of Caitlin’s shirt left her. The things she said to him, about his life not ending here, about being able to stand on his two feet were no longer empty promises Caitlin said to stop herself from screaming.

 

“Where’s Jesse?” Cisco asked, breaking Caitlin from those murky dangerous thoughts.

 

Caitlin suddenly felt like she could choke on embarrassment. She was callous to Jesse for no reason when she was hurting, when they were both hurting after she saved their lives today and that was not fair.

 

“I may have sent her back to Earth 3.”

 

“Gimme something of hers. Let me find her.”

 

Caitlin didn’t want to leave Cisco’s side. She also couldn’t deny him anything. Her mind immediately went to Jesse’s red stained alcohol swabs sitting in the bathroom garbage pail.

 

Caitlin reluctantly lowered the med bed’s safety rails and let herself onto the floor.

 

“I’ll be right back,” she said as she went for them.

 

When she returned, her hair was cleaner—As clean as two more minutes of scrubbing could manage, and she went right back beside him on his bed.

 

“It’s gross but it’ll do,” she warned, placing them into the outstretched palm of his hand.

 

He closed his fist and widened his eyes, looking into the distance.

 

“She’s with Harry at her Team Quick base on Earth 3. Harry is throwing things on the ground, typical, but—Oh she’s throwing things with him! Seems to be fine, then.”

 

He loosened his grip and took Caitlin’s hand again immediately, resting his head against her shoulder as he vibed them.

 

“What does this mean?” Iris asked Caitlin, who was watching Cisco after several hours of blackness, be enthralled by the mundane images of their Star Labs Med Bay. “He can’t hold our hands forever.”

 

 _Yes he can,_  Caitlin wanted to argue, but held her tongue.

 

“Cisco,” she asked, “Are you sure your powers are activated by touch?”

 

“What? You mean am I a telepath? I’m no Gorilla Grodd.”

 

 _Ha_ Killer Frost laughed. _If only_ . _You’d be in trouble, Caity._

 

“Right,” said Iris.

 

But Caitlin wasn’t convinced.

 

“You’ve had vibes in dreams before. You weren’t touching anything then. You’d call them nightmares, remember?”

 

“Yeah okay,” Cisco allowed, “But I’m never conscious for that.”

 

Caitlin looked down at him, stroking his arm absentmindedly, still in awe of him. He’s terrified, she knows he is, and he’s concussed and bruised and blind but still alright, still her Cisco, still debating metahuman characteristics.

 

Her chest started to constrict again. This time though, it wasn’t rage. It was a different kind of feeling that was passionate and deep and unconditional. 

 

Caitlin caught Iris’s gaze, how she’s picking up probably everything going through Caitlin’s mind with a sudden understanding. An _aha!_ moment as a slow smile spread across Iris’s face.

 

Caitlin nodded, bearing her heart open, and yes, Iris knew exactly how it felt didn’t she? To love so fiercely her best friend.

 

Cisco sensed the girls’ silent conversation and perked up. “What is it?”

 

“We love you, Cisco,” Iris responded simply, returning to her husband’s side. “We’re just relieved you’re alive and still saying Cisco things.”

 

Cisco blushed. “I’m blind, not brain dead.”

 

“Not a funny joke,” Caitlin replied sternly.

 

It took another few minutes before Caitlin realized Cisco wouldn’t be comfortable still in his Vibe suit, and began to unfasten the hidden buckles. It was difficult to do when he refused to let her go, still hanging onto her like a crutch that provided sight.

 

Her hand smoothed over his pocket, which was lumpy. Something was in it. Caitlin paused and unzipped it.

 

Cisco’s Vibe goggles.

 

He didn’t need them anymore like he used to but they certainly helped his focus. She opened the arms of the goggles, remembering the first time he made them. The first time he put them on. The nervousness that rolled off him in waves as he tried to describe what they only knew as the impossible.

 

She remembered when he completed his suit, how the apprehension on his face was undermined by his pure excitement of being able to wear what he put together himself. He was proud of it and he should be. It was practical, aesthetically Cisco, and he looked good. Confident in his skin.

 

Caitlin blinked at his goggles. _In his skin._

 

These glasses weren’t like that. His powers weren’t like that.

 

Cisco wasn’t Barry. He didn’t have electricity at his fingertips or the Speed Force embedded into his soul. He channelled the outside from within. The outer world, the multiverse. The others. He worked with the exterior forces, with external factors.

 

What he saw never came from his eyes.

 

What if she could tune Cisco’s goggles to perpetually engage the sensors that function while he vibes? Like virtual reality glasses in those video games he used to make her play back in 2014. Then, simply like a patient needing glasses, Caitlin could enable him with the ability to see with his powers. With his mind.

 

Caitlin tucked the goggles into her own Killer Frost jacket, and remembered the ones he made her to defeat Devoe too. She’d have to snoop into his workshop for those as well.

 

The more she thought about it, the more she knew she could do it.

 

Caitlin knew there were consequences to consider. How would constantly probing Cisco into vibe dimensions affect his health? Vibes have been known to be taxing sometimes, and the last thing she wanted was for him to go into sensory overdrive and trigger a seizure. But it was possible. Goggles that could cure Cisco’s blindness.

 

Caitlin scolded herself as she fully pushed Cisco’s jacket down his arms, and helped him into the fresh T-shirt Iris had handed her to pull over his neck. It wasn’t going to _cure_ anything. They wouldn’t be a permanent fix. He wouldn’t be able to wear them all the time. He’d still have to learn braille, use Gideon at Star Labs, and become very comfortable using speech to text. But it was something.

 

It was something Caitlin could do. Had to do. She won’t fail him again.

 

Because this was what she was good at. She fixes, and mends, and makes.

 

It’s more than that. Caitlin was more than just the doctor who gave bad news. She’s suddenly reminded of her residency and that first death. The curt informal words of her supervisor. About how she was too emotional and needed to remove herself from the situation. That was wrong.

 

Caitlin cared too much. She could never remove herself from the situation. Could never not be emotional, no matter how many times in her life she may have tried. And this was the most, the highest stakes she’s ever had to take because this wasn’t just anyone. This was Cisco. _Cisco._ Who she had just confessed was her heart and rock and soul without him truly understanding how deeply that was felt.

 

Caitlin got up and whispered to Cisco that she was going to finally take a shower and change. He grabbed onto her hand tightly before letting go. She lingered her gaze on him, how her image had relaxed him, and he now had a soft expression.

 

“Cisco,” she said, finally, surprising him since he thought she left. He raised an eyebrow straight ahead. She was going to be bold and tell him everything, but she lost her resolve.

 

“I’ll be right back,” she promised instead.

 

“He’ll be okay,” Iris told Caitlin with reassurance. “Take care of yourself. I’ll be here if he needs anything.”

 

Caitlin was touched by that. “Thank you, Iris.”

 

~.~

 

Once she was completely cleaned and dressed with her hair up in a sloppy careless ponytail, she climbed right back into Cisco’s medical bed. Cisco was asleep, his breathing deep and even, and Caitlin was also exhausted and emotionally drained.

 

There was no room on the gurney for space. Caitlin practically flopped on top of him, resting her head against his chest.

 

His heartbeat was strong and steady in her ear, and she closed her eyes, trying not to burst into tears of relief as the events of the last forty-eight hours crashed down on her. She was so close to having lost him. So close to watching him plummet to his death. And if that had happened, she'd have never forgiven herself for not telling him everything she needed him to know. 

 

 _I love you,_ Caitlin wanted to whisper, mouthing it out to test the words, to throw them out there, so it was real, and not just the loudest thought in her mind.

 

“Hey,” he said, “I love you too.”

 

Caitlin simultaneously froze and felt warmth flood all over. All this time she thought he was sleeping. “I didn’t say that out loud.”

 

“You didn’t have to,” Cisco mused in a low voice Caitlin wasn’t sure she’s ever heard before. “Caitlin, I see you.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this and the title of part 2 is a Martin Luther King Jr. quote: "Only in darkness can you see the stars."

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Cisco goes blind after a meta attack. Caitlin remembers the fight in semi-graphic detail. Barry breaks both his legs (not explicit).


End file.
